Time’s Person of the Year: Barack Obama

There was some stiff competition but President Obama won the contest by being named Time’s Person of the Year. Here’s a short summary:

Barack Obama gesturing while answering a question during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

The commander-in-chief has another feather to add to his cap: He’s now the two-time winner of Time‘s Person of the Year (and the second after George W. Bush to get the nod in both the year of his election and re-election). In a lengthy look at Barack Obama’s re-election win, Time declares that we now “know the difference between the wish and the thing, the hype and the man in the office.” And while he has managed impressive electoral feats—he’s the first Dem since FDR to snag a majority of the popular vote twice—his win makes him something more than someone who managed to hang onto office, notes Time: He’s “both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” one “in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes.”

Writes Richard Stengel, “For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is Time’s 2012 Person of the Year.”